The Set of Primitive Recursive Functions 1

We follow [31] in defining the set of primitive recursive functions. The important helper notion is the homogeneous function from finite sequences of natural numbers into natural numbers where homogeneous means that all the sequences in the domain are of the same length. The set of all such functions is then used to define the notion of a set closed under composition of functions and under primitive recursion. We call a set primitively recursively closed iff it contains the initial functions (nullary constant function returning 0, unary successor and projection functions for all arities) and is closed under composition and primitive recursion. The set of primitive recursive functions is then defined as the smallest set of functions which is primitive recursively closed. We show that this set can be obtained by primitive recursive approximation. We finish with showing that some simple and well known functions are primitive recursive.